Ex-AMD veteran leaves Samsung for Apple
Jim Mergard, a 16-year veteran of Advanced Micro Devices and recent Samsung employee, has left Samsung to go to work at Apple, reports the "Wall Street Journal" (http://macte.ch/lXSb6).
He's known for playing a leading role in the development of a high-profile AMD chip that carried the code name Brazos and was designed for low-end portable computers. Patrick Moorhead, a former AMD executive who now leads the research firm Moor Insights & Strategy, tells the "WSJ" that Mergard brings deep expertise in both computer technology as well as in products known as SoCs–systems on a chip.
Besides the current breed of Apple smartphones and tablets, Moorhead says Mergard’s talents could potentially be applied to Apple’s computer fforts, where its Macs use Intel chips but not SoCs.
"He would be very capable of pulling together internal and external resources to do a PC processor for Apple," Moorhead tells the "WSJ."